ut now it was different. Berande meant everything. It must succeed--not
merely because Joan was a partner in it, but because he wanted to make
that partnership permanently binding. Three more years and the
plantation would be a splendid-paying investment. They could then take
yearly trips to Australia, and oftener; and an occasional run home to
England--or Hawaii, would come as a matter of course.

He spent his evenings poring over accounts, or making endless
calculations based on cheaper freights for copra and on the possible
maximum and minimum market prices for that staple of commerce. His days
were spent out on the plantation. He undertook more clearing of bush;
and clearing and planting went on, under his personal supervision, at a
faster pace than ever before. He experimented with premiums for extra
work performed by the black boys, and yearned continually for more of
them to put to work. Not until Joan could return on the schooner would
this be possible, for the professional recruiters were all under long
contracts to the Fulcrum Brothers, Morgan and Raff, and the Fires, Philp
Company; while the _Flibberty-Gibbet_ was wholly occupied in running
about among his widely scattered trading stations, which extended from
the coast of New Georgia in one direction to Ulava and Sikiana in the
other. Blacks he must have, and, if Joan were fortunate in getting a
schooner, three months at least must elapse before the first recruits
could be landed on Berande.

A week after the _Upolu's_ departure, the _Malakula_ dropped anchor and
her skipper came ashore for a game of billiards and to gossip until the
land breeze sprang up. Besides, as he told his super-cargo, he simply
had to come ashore, not merely to deliver the large package of seeds with
full instructions for planting from Joan, but to shock Sheldon with the
little surprise born of information he was bringing with him.

Captain Auckland played the billiards first, and it was not until he was
comfortably seated in a steamer-chair, his second whisky securely in his
hand, that he let off his bomb.

"A great piece, that Miss Lackland of yours," he chuckled. "Claims to be
a part-owner of Berande. Says she's your partner. Is that straight?"

Sheldon nodded coldly.

"You don't say? That is a surprise! Well, she hasn't convinced Guvutu
or Tulagi of it. They're pretty used to irregular things over there,
but--ha! ha!--" he stopped to have his laugh out and to